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Saturday, December 5, 2015

I pushed the Asians around Costco yesterday, pushing a cart full of embarrassment and 100 pounds of white rice because I just finished the book Lights Out by Ted Kopple or, as Dan calls it, That Ridiculous Book That's Making You Crazy. We used to watch the Nat Geo show Preppers just so we could laugh at them with their barrels full of oatmeal and their jury-rigged water catchment system on their backwoods plot of somewhere. And now suddenly they don't seem quite so boob-ish. Can we talk about this? The world, it is going haywire. Perhaps no more than it has the last 2,000 years, but still. And my thought that we'd just ride our lives out before things got really bad is starting to feel naive. Anne Graham Lotz (Reverend Billy Graham's daughter) believes we will see the second coming in our generation. She is prophesying this boldly and often. She is either a false prophet or the real deal, but either way, she heads up a large and growing body of people who believe the end is near. Wether you stand in her camp or not, you cannot ignore that the world outside our doors has become uncertain and scary and we are in possibly imminent danger of a cataclysmic event that will leave us hungry and scrambling. And I'm starting to think that it is foolish to not prepare at least a little.Please hear me very clearly: We are not out to be the last people standing, not arming our family and running tactical training exercises to ensure that nothing breaches our bunker. This world doesn't hold our citizenship and we will not cling to it. But if something happens, I need to be able to feed my family until help arrives. To that end I'm laying in stores to feed and support my family for a month. Which is why I am buying 50 pound sacks of white rice and telling the checkers it's for a rice table for the little one's Christmas. That's a lie. I would rather chew off my arms than welcome that mess into my kitchen. I'm squirreling away for winter like an Ingalls: sugar, oatmeal, peanut butter, rice, beans and batteries. A hand crank radio and a source of water and perhaps a smidgen of chocolate. No guns, no hazmat suits, no camo tarps. Just enough to feed my crew until help arrives. It's less prepping and more just being smart. The internet is rife with conspiracy theories and scary what-ifs put out by some very interesting people. Don't read them. Don't google "surviving a power grid outage". You will crap your pants and then order four thousand dollars worth of stuff you probably don't need from Amazon, like a barrel of wheat berries and a hand grinder. Trust me, I almost did this. But don't be naive and think that you are immune either. Can you do me that solid? Can you at least lay in supplies to keep your family going for a month or two so that I feel better about the whole deal? Jesus will win. That is truth we can take to the bank. I will not live in fear and won't feed that bitter pill to my Smalls, but I will be smart and prepare to care for them in the case of things going a little nutso for awhile. If it were just me, I'd probably drive to Schulers, lay down in the fiction section and wait for Jesus, but it's not just me and I won't sacrifice the well-being of my family to the fear of being thought odd. Better an ounce of prevention than a pound of cure, or something like that. Y'all are my family and I want you to be prepared, want to sit down with you post-whatever at Marie's for a Balsamic Salad and say, whew! That was a humdinger and if I never see another grain of rice again, it'll be too soon. Join me there? I'll save us a table.This is me being real. And obligated by the husband reading over my shoulder to tell you that he does not buy in, but as the world's greatest, most caring and generous man, has allowed me to ride the crazy bus for the lot of us, bankrolling far too many trips to Costco this week and shaking his head over the 2 cords of wood I had delivered yesterday.

I pushed the Asians around Costco yesterday, pushing a cart full of embarrassment and 100 pounds of white rice because I just finished the book Lights Out by Ted Kopple or, as Dan calls it, That Ridiculous Book That's Making You Crazy. We used to watch the Nat Geo show Preppers just so we could laugh at them with their barrels full of oatmeal and their jury-rigged water catchment system on their backwoods plot of somewhere. And now suddenly they don't seem quite so boob-ish. Can we talk about this? The world, it is going haywire. Perhaps no more than it has the last 2,000 years, but still. And my thought that we'd just ride our lives out before things got really bad is starting to feel naive. Anne Graham Lotz (Reverend Billy Graham's daughter) believes we will see the second coming in our generation. She is prophesying this boldly and often. She is either a false prophet or the real deal, but either way, she heads up a large and growing body of people who believe the end is near. Wether you stand in her camp or not, you cannot ignore that the world outside our doors has become uncertain and scary and we are in possibly imminent danger of a cataclysmic event that will leave us hungry and scrambling. And I'm starting to think that it is foolish to not prepare at least a little.
Please hear me very clearly: We are not out to be the last people standing, not arming our family and running tactical training exercises to ensure that nothing breaches our bunker. This world doesn't hold our citizenship and we will not cling to it. But if something happens, I need to be able to feed my family until help arrives. To that end I'm laying in stores to feed and support my family for a month. Which is why I am buying 50 pound sacks of white rice and telling the checkers it's for a rice table for the little one's Christmas. That's a lie. I would rather chew off my arms than welcome that mess into my kitchen. I'm squirreling away for winter like an Ingalls: sugar, oatmeal, peanut butter, rice, beans and batteries. A hand crank radio and a source of water and perhaps a smidgen of chocolate. No guns, no hazmat suits, no camo tarps. Just enough to feed my crew until help arrives. It's less prepping and more just being smart. The internet is rife with conspiracy theories and scary what-ifs put out by some very interesting people. Don't read them. Don't google "surviving a power grid outage". You will crap your pants and then order four thousand dollars worth of stuff you probably don't need from Amazon, like a barrel of wheat berries and a hand grinder. Trust me, I almost did this. But don't be naive and think that you are immune either. Can you do me that solid? Can you at least lay in supplies to keep your family going for a month or two so that I feel better about the whole deal?
Jesus will win. That is truth we can take to the bank. I will not live in fear and won't feed that bitter pill to my Smalls, but I will be smart and prepare to care for them in the case of things going a little nutso for awhile. If it were just me, I'd probably drive to Schulers, lay down in the fiction section and wait for Jesus, but it's not just me and I won't sacrifice the well-being of my family to the fear of being thought odd. Better an ounce of prevention than a pound of cure, or something like that. Y'all are my family and I want you to be prepared, want to sit down with you post-whatever at Marie's for a Balsamic Salad and say, whew! That was a humdinger and if I never see another grain of rice again, it'll be too soon. Join me there? I'll save us a table.
This is me being real. And obligated by the husband reading over my shoulder to tell you that he does not buy in, but as the world's greatest, most caring and generous man, has allowed me to ride the crazy bus for the lot of us, bankrolling far too many trips to Costco this week and shaking his head over the 2 cords of wood I had delivered yesterday.